


Colors in the sky

by StrangeNoise



Category: Barry (TV 2018)
Genre: Barry has a lot of emotions and doesn't know how to deal with them, Established Relationship, Fluff, Happy Barry, Holidays, Kissing, Mentions of PTSD, Multi, New Year's Eve, New Year's Kisses, New Year's Resolutions, Other, Polyamory, Selfies, comforting barry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:28:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28427799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StrangeNoise/pseuds/StrangeNoise
Summary: Barry, Hank and Sally spend New Year's Eve in a hotel in the middle of nowhere and while the night starts out rather stressful for Barry his partners manage to distract him and even let him have a good time...
Relationships: Barry Berkman/NoHo Hank, Barry Berkman/Sally Reed, Barry Berkman/Sally Reed/NoHo Hank
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6





	Colors in the sky

**Author's Note:**

> Based on an idea that imnotreddieyet and I had a bit ago. Just some fluff to end this year because we all deserve some happiness!
> 
> Please excuse potential mistakes of any kind I wrote this in a caffeine-induced haze...

„It’s almost midnight. Let’s get out champagne for toast!” 

As soon as Hank said it, he was already off the bed and kneeling in front of the mini-fridge in their hotel room to get the bottle of champagne they had brought for the occasion. Sally left the bed only seconds later to get the plastic champagne flutes they had also packed, leaving Barry alone on the bed. Desperate for some kind of distraction, Barry grabbed the remote and started zapping through channels on the small hotel tv. It was unnecessary, really, as they all showed the same countdown to midnight but at least it kept him busy for a bit.

Not for the first time, Barry began to wonder why he had even come along on this trip. When Sally and Hank had suggested spending New Year’s Eve outside of LA it sounded nice at first. They had found a cute little hotel in the middle of nowhere in Oregon and everyone had been excited to go. And the first days there had been fun, too. But then people had started setting off fireworks randomly throughout the day and it shockingly reminded Barry of why he had come to hate New Year’s Eve. 

It was almost laughably cliché how much the explosions from the fireworks set the brunet on edge but he couldn’t help it. Every new bang unearthed a memory Barry had been trying to bury for years and the longer it went on, the more tense and upset he got. His partners, of course, tried their best to distract or calm him but it never worked for long and by the time New Year’s Eve came around Barry felt like he was thoroughly ruining the trip for all of them with his moods. 

So, when Hank and Sally rejoined him on the bed, each with a glass of champagne in hand and pressing a third into his hand, the brunet wasn’t sure if he was more terrified of the clock striking midnight or excited for this whole thing to be over soon. 

When the countdown on tv reached zero and fireworks went off outside almost immediately, Barry didn’t join in on his partners’ cheering. Instead, his grip on the stem of his glass tightened more and more to the point where he was certain the plastic would give at any moment. Before that could happen, however, Sally and Hank appeared in his field of vision with bright smiles on their faces.

“Happy New Year, Baby”, Sally said before leaning in to give Barry a new year’s kiss. The brunet did his best to relax and return the kiss and once it ended he muttered something that could be interpreted as  _ ‘happy new year’s…‘ _ . 

“Yes, Happy New Year!”, Hank chimed in only seconds later before slamming his lips to Barry’s with a little more force than necessary. Barry couldn’t help but smile a least a little, though. He loved seeing the Chechen this excited and, thankfully, Hank’s good moods were incredibly contagious. 

When the kiss ended, Hank pulled back, then went to kiss Sally with the same excitement before Barry could even say anything. And even though the three of them had been an item for several months now, the sight of Hank and Sally together never failed to captivate Barry to the point of completely forgetting his surroundings. Some days, he still couldn’t believe this was the life he lived now and feared that one morning he would simply wake up alone in some dank motel room. But, as of yet, it hadn’t happened and Barry willed himself to relax and believe this was true. 

“Wanna go out and take some pictures?”, Sally asked the moment she and Hank parted. The Chechen nodded as eagerly and hopped off the bed to go and find his shoes.

“I think I’d rather stay here”, Barry muttered. Sally looked like she was going to try and convince him of something else but then she only nodded.

“Maybe you can join us later”, she suggested with a gentle smile before leaning in and pressing a soft kiss to Barry’s forehead. Then she left the bed too, putting on her shoes and jacket, and stepped out onto the balcony, followed by Hank.

Barry watched from his spot on the bed as colors exploded in the night sky. Out on the small balcony, Sally and Hank were excitedly pointing at each new colorful bloom, shouting over the noise to tell each other something that Barry couldn’t make out. It wasn’t for the first time that the brunet wondered how two people this bubbly had decided that a grump like him was the person they wanted to spend their time with. Maybe it was like in those memes about extroverts adopting an introvert that the others in the acting class liked to send him and that Sally had had to explain to him. Barry liked to imagine that he had become a lot less introverted in the last few months thanks to both the acting class and his partners but he could not help but feel that the memes were true nonetheless. 

Outside on the balcony, Sally and Hank had moved on from looking at the fireworks and were now taking pictures. Back in the day, when it had only been Sally and him, Barry had been her personal photographer for when she wanted to take pictures for her Instagram or Facebook account. And Barry had truly done his best but every time Sally had gone through the pictures afterward, she had been hiding her disappointment. She had assured him, of course, that the photos weren’t bad – just not social media material. And Barry had stood there, nodding along as if he understood what that meant and promised to do better next time.

Now that Hank had joined them, however, Barry had been relieved of his photographer duties. Hank seemed to have much more of an eye for what Sally was asking for when she wanted someone to take pictures of her for social media. Where photo sessions with Barry had taken up to ten minutes and ended with Sally choosing the picture that made her scowl the least, Hank took three or four pictures and Sally would love every single one. Barry was often left to stand somewhere near where the two were and watching as they climbed places or bent in all types of uncomfortable positions to get the best angle. And once the photos were taken, Sally and Hank would spend long minutes discussing filters, captions, hashtags, or the best time to post the picture to get the most interaction while Barry sat next to them feeling like his grandfather must have felt that one Christmas where Barry tried to explain to him how a video recorder worked. 

“Hey, no more looking grumpy!”

Barry startled and turned to look at the door to the balcony that they’d left ajar and through which Hank was leaning into the room and beaming at him. He had his half-empty champagne glass in hand and his cheeks were flushed a rosy pink.

“Come on, is time for new year’s couple selfie!”, Hank said and gestured for Barry to join him and Sally outside. With a sigh, Barry placed his own glass on the bedside table and got off the bed. It wasn’t that he didn’t like pictures with Hank and Sally. The thing was that he never liked how he looked in them. Photos of him when he didn’t know he was being photographed were fine. But as soon as someone pointed a camera at him and told him to smile Barry just froze.

_ “You look like someone’s holding you at gunpoint. This is a camera pointed at you, Barry, not a death ray.” _ Gene had once said after almost half an hour of trying and failing to take a proper picture of Barry for an upcoming show. Looking at pictures of him after that, Barry realized that Gene was absolutely right. He did look like someone was threatening him whenever he was told to smile on camera. The problem was that he had no idea how to change it. And while, thankfully, his partners didn’t seem to mind, Barry still hated almost every photo they took together because of how he looked in them. 

And yet, he could never say no when Sally and Hank asked to take pictures with him. Slowly, Barry followed Hank outside onto the balcony. It was much colder out there than it had been inside their cozy little hotel room and the brunet immediately hoped that this wouldn’t take too long. Sally leaned against the railing and was checking something on her phone but when she registered Barry and Hank joining her, she looked up at them, smiling brightly and it instantly soothed Barry’s nerves. 

“God, I always forget how much taller than me you guys are”, she sighed a moment later, her smile making way for a slight frown, “I should’ve brought the high heels so we don’t have to work around that crazy height difference again.”

“It’s going to be fine”, Barry assured her with a crooked smile of his own. By now, he was used to bending at the knees for pictures with Sally so they would somehow both fit into it without either of them being at an awkward angle. It had taken some practice but usually, they managed to make it work. Sally sighed and returned his smile before turning to Hank. A glance was exchanged between them like they had spoken about this before and come up with a plan that Barry wasn’t aware of. But before the brunet could question it, the two were already on either side of him and wrapping their arms around him in a three-person-hug. Barry was a little confused at first but figured that there were worse poses the others could have thought of. 

“It’s like hugging softest tree trunk in the world”, Hank shouted over the noise of fireworks still going off behind them. Barry couldn’t suppress the snort and the laugh that escaped him at that and right at that moment, Sally took a picture of them. 

Before Barry could comment on that or protest that, surely, he looked terribly awkward in the picture, both Hank and Sally moved closer and pressed a kiss to each of Barry’s cheeks simultaneously. Out of the corner of his eye, Barry could see Hank repeatedly pressing the part of his phone’s screen where the release was. For the moment, however, the brunet was too occupied to wonder how weird he would look in pictures taken like this but he was sure that would come in a moment. 

“Did it work?”, Sally asked a few seconds later, letting go of Barry and moving over to where Hank was standing. The Chechen turned his phone so the two of them could see the pictures while Barry tried to somehow lean over them to get a good look at them too. There were at least twenty pictures of the three of them together and while a good half of them showed one of them with their eyes closed or at an unflattering angle, the rest of them were actually pretty good. Barry was surprised to see himself in a picture and actually like what he looked like for once. Somehow, with their surprise kisses and silly comments Sally and Hank had managed to get some genuine smiles out of Barry which resulted in him looking happy in the pictures instead of like someone who just had their toes stepped on. 

“These are like greatest pictures of you ever, Barry”, Hank announced after the three of them had looked through the photos for at least five minutes, “We have to tell everyone we unlocked secret to actually make you smile in photos.” 

“Gene will love this”, Sally added, then got on her tiptoes and pressed a kiss to the underside of Barry’s jaw, “You look so relaxed in those. Even with all the fireworks in the background.” 

That last comment actually caught Barry off-guard and it took him a moment to realize that it was true. Ever since the clock struck midnight he had been too busy watching his partners take photos or taking pictures with them to care about the sound of fireworks exploding all around them. All day, he had expected he would spend the first hours of the new year curled-up and terrified in a hotel bed somewhere but instead he’d gotten several new year’s kisses and the best pictures of himself anyone had made since around his eighth birthday. 

“Yeah, I guess. Thanks for distracting me, guys”, Barry muttered, looking down at his feet. For a moment he wondered if maybe his new year’s resolution should be not to get so awkward when expressing even a hint of emotion but then he was distracted yet again by Sally grabbing him by the wrist and dragging him back inside.

Thanks to them leaving the door open for almost twenty minutes, it was now as cold in their hotel room as it was outside. Thankfully, a remedy for that was easily found as the three of them climbed into the huge bed and snuggled up to one another under the thick covers. Once again, Barry ended up in the middle of things with Hank and Sally hugging him from either side. It was comfortable and warm and Barry couldn’t remember being this content ever before the three of them got together. Once again, the thought of learning how to express his emotions better in the new year popped up in the brunet’s head and it seemed like an actually good idea at that moment. Because there was nothing Barry wanted more right now than to tell Sally and Hank how happy they made them and how lucky he felt to have the two of them in his life. But if he knew anything about himself it was that if he opened his mouth now to say what he felt it would come out a stammered mess and neither of his partners would understand the true extent of his feelings for them.

So, for the moment, all Barry felt he could do was to wrap his arms around Sally and Hank a little tighter and hope they would understand the meaning behind it. When both Hank and Sally immediately hugged him back, Barry knew they understood and he couldn’t help but break into a smile that probably looked horribly goofy. Finding not one but two people who loved and understood him was the best thing that ever happened to him and right then and there, wrapped up in them in a comfortable hotel bed with the last fireworks going off outside, Barry decided that he would make it his ultimate goal for the new year to learn how to tell them how much they meant to him. 

He knew it would be hard work but he was sure that for the people he loved the most in the world, every hardship would ultimately be worth it. 


End file.
